In a damaging blow to our beliefs about the democracy of human effort, science has another whopper: When it comes to brain development, the playing field isn't equal.
This radical new hypothesis is based on the nascent, but increasingly irrefutable, science of neurogenesis, the process by which the brain creates new neurons. Until recently, modern neuroscience was predicated on the idea that all brain neurons emerge during prenatal and early postnatal development, and the number of brain cells is then fixed for life. But the research of Elizabeth Gould, a professor of psychology at Princeton University, turned that theory on its head.
Her laboratory's observation of marmosets demonstrated that the primate brain is always creating new neurons. What's more, her team went on to prove that the structure of our brain is incredibly influenced by our surroundings. Put a primate under stressful conditions, and its brain begins to starve. It stops creating new cells. The cells it already has retreat inward. The mind is disfigured.
The implications of Gould's observations are monumental. In situations of chronic stress, like living in impoverished conditions or being low in a dominancy hierarchy, the production of neurons stops. No new neural pathways are created, the brain suffers, and the perceived truism that we are all able through hard work and effort to achieve congruent levels of acumen is kaput.
The takeaway?
"The mind is like a muscle: It swells with exercise...escaping the downward cycle of stress," writes Jonah Lehrer in Seed (Feb/March 2006)
Source: "The Incredible Growing Brain" by Laine Bergeson, Utne, July/August 2006